5th CONFERENCE OF ENGLISH,
AMERICAN AND CANADIAN STUDIES


BRNO, August 27 - 29, 1996


organized by

The Department of English and American Studies of the
Faculty of Arts of Masaryk University and
The Czech Association for the Study of English

PARTICIPANTS


PhDr. Daniela BAČOVÁ, Piešťany
PhDr. Margita BALLOVÁ, Prešov
PhDr. Zdeněk BERAN, Praha
PhDr. Viera BOCKOVÁ, CSc., Bratislava
Mgr. Ivo BROSKEVIČ, Ostrava
PhDr. Jana CHAMONIKOLASOVÁ, Brno
PhDr. Pavel DOLEŽEL, CSc., Brno
prof. PhDr. Libuše DUŠKOVÁ, DrSc., Praha
Charles Michael ELAVSKY, Ostrava
PhDr. Milan FERENČÍK, M.A., Prešov
PhDr. Katarína FEŤKOVÁ, Banská Bystrica
Mgr. Petr FILIP, Ostrava
prof. PhDr. Jan FIRBAS, DrSc., Dr.h.c., Brno
PhDr. Milada FRANKOVÁ, CSc., Brno
Mgr. Marián GAZDÍK, Bratislava
PhDr. Iva GILBERTOVÁ, Brno
PhDr. Eva GOLKOVÁ, CSc., Brno
doc. PhDr. Josef GRMELA, CSc., Praha
prof. PhDr. Eva HAJIČOVÁ, DrSc., Praha
PhDr. Alena HLADKÁ, Brno
doc. PhDr. Josef HLADKÝ, CSc., Opava, Brno
PhDr. Anna HLAVŇOVÁ, CSc., Žilina
Mgr. Blanka HORÁKOVÁ, Opava
PhDr. Darina HORNÁČKOVÁ, Košice
PhDr. Eva HOROVÁ, Brno
PhDr. Tatiana HRIVÍKOVÁ, Bratislava
Mgr. Hana HUDECOVÁ, M.A., Bratislava
PhDr. Zuzana JETTMAROVÁ, Praha
PhDr. Miroslav JINDRA, CSc., Praha
PhDr. Hana KATRŇÁKOVÁ, Brno
PhDr. Eva KLÍMOVÁ, Opava
PhDr. Pavel KOLÁŘ, CSc., Opava
PhDr. Edita KOMINARECOVÁ, L'ubotice
Mgr. Slávka KRAJČOVIČOVÁ, Prešov
PhDr. Milena KRHUTOVÁ, Brno
Mgr. Otakar KŘÍŽ, Brno
PhDr. Jaroslav KUŠNÍR, Prešov
PhDr. Lidia KYZLINKOVÁ, Brno
Mgr. Štěpánka MAGSTADTOVÁ, CSc., Plzeň
doc. PhDr. Bohuslav MÁNEK, CSc., Hradec Králové
PhDr. Vladimíra MIŇOVSKÁ, Praha
PhDr. Gabriela MIŠŠÍKOVÁ, Nitra
PaedDr. Viera NEMČOKOVÁ, Košice
PhDr. Lída NEUWIRTHOVÁ, Brno
PhDr. Jaroslav ONDRÁČEK, Brno
PhDr. Věra PÁLENSKÁ, CSc., Brno
James R. PAPP, PhD., Bratislava
PhDr. Michal PEPRNÍK, Dr., MPhil., Olomouc
Mgr. Jana PETLACHOVÁ, Opava
Tim PHILLIPS, Piešťany
PhDr. Nadežda POLLÁKOVÁ, Prešov
PhDr. Renata POVOLNÁ, Brno
PhDr. Marianna PRČÍKOVÁ, Prešov
doc. PhDr. Iva PÝCHOVÁ, Ostrava
Mgr. ing. Jiří RAMBOUSEK, Brno
PhDr. Anna RITLYOVÁ, Prešov
PhDr. Milan RŮŽIČKA, Brno
Mgr. Anna SISÁKOVÁ, Prešov
PhDr. Alena SLEPIČKOVÁ, Brno
PhDr. Vladislav SMOLKA, České Budějovice
Mgr. Helena SOUKUPOVÁ, Praha
PhDr. Don SPARLING, B.A., Brno
doc. PhDr. Jaroslava STAŠKOVÁ, CSc., Prešov
doc. PhDr. Pavol ŠTEKAUER, CSc., Prešov
prof. PhDr. Zdeněk STŘÍBRNÝ, DrSc., Dr.h.c. Praha
prof. PhDr. Aleš SVOBODA, DrSc., Opava
Mgr. Diana SVOBODOVÁ, Opava
prof. PhDr. Eva TANDLICHOVÁ, CSc., Bratislava
prof. PhDr. Jarmila TÁRNYIKOVÁ, CSc., Olomouc
Mgr. Renáta TIMKOVÁ, Košice
Mgr. Renáta TOMÁŠKOVÁ, Ostrava
doc. PhDr. Ludmila URBANOVÁ, CSc., Brno
Mgr. Eva VESELÁ, Praha
PhDr. Eva VĚŠÍNOVÁ, Praha
PhDr. Jitka VLČKOVÁ, Brno
PhDr. Lucie VYBÍRALOVÁ, Ostrava
Danuše ZAHRADNÍČKOVÁ, Brno

List of papers


CULTURAL STUDIES (4 papers)
ELAVSKY: The "alternative" state of music? Defining originality in the postmodern sphere of popular American and British music
HUDECOVÁ: Misunderstood messages: Some aspects of the Boston grafitti scene /Summary/
MAGSTADTOVÁ: American and British studies - successes and problems /Summary/
RITLYOVÁ: Teaching cultural studies at the Pedagogical Faculty of P.J. Šafárik University in Prešov /Summary/

LINGUISTICS (23 papers)
BROSKEVIČ: Some aspects of mass media language /Summary/
CHAMONIKOLASOVÁ: A prosodic analysis of English and Czech spoken texts /Summary/
DUŠKOVÁ: Synonymy vs. differentiation of variant realizations of the information structure /Summary/
FERENČÍK: On some aspects of interactional dynamism of spoken communication /Summary/
FIRBAS: The role of intonation in FSP /Summary/
HAJIČOVÁ: Salience in dialogues (A study based on A Corpus of spoken English) /Summary/
HLADKÝ: Reduplication as word-formative means in Czech and English /Summary/
KLÍMOVÁ: The communicative dynamism of the English, Italian and Czech verb
KOLÁŘ P.: Stress in binominal street names
KRAJČOVIČOVÁ - FERENČÍK: Some sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic aspects of verbal and nonverbal elements of communication in literary discourse /Summary/
MIŇOVSKÁ: ICLE - International Corpus of Learner English /Summary/
MIŠŠÍKOVÁ: Lexical configurations in technical terminology: Semantic approach in dental terminology /Summary/
NEMČOKOVÁ: English computing terms in Slovak /Summary/
PRČÍKOVÁ: Some aspects of gender and language studies /Summary/
RŮŽIČKA: Mechanism of meaning
SMOLKA: On restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses /Summary/
ŠTEKAUER - SUTHERLAND-SMITH - STAŠKOVÁ - FRANKO: Getting beyond the rules of language /Summary/
SVOBODA: Context as vector /Summary/
SVOBODOVÁ: English loanwords in contemporary Czech journalistic texts /Summary/
TÁRNYIKOVÁ: Czenglo-mania: Health to our mouths? /Summary/ TOMÁŠKOVÁ: Lexical cohesion in English and Czech drama dialogues
URBANOVÁ: Modification of the illocutionary force
VYBÍRALOVÁ: On some language & stylistic features of the language of projects

LITERARY STUDIES (17 papers)
BAČOVÁ: Harold Pinter: Reading A Slight Ache without pain /Summary/
BERAN: Professor Otakar Vočadlo's legacy
FEŤKOVÁ: Motherhood and sisterhood in Toni Morrison's work
FILIP: English Restoration drama
FRANKOVÁ: Molly Keane's black comedy: A critique of a class /Summary/
GILBERTOVÁ: Wole Soyinka: A Scourge of Hyacinths /Summary/
GRMELA: The minimalist trend in modern American fiction
KUŠNÍR: Experiment in Donald Barthelme's novel Snow White /Summary/
KYZLINKOVÁ: Social issues in Agatha Christie's mysteries (Class, crime, country, clothes, and generation) /Summary/
PÁLENSKÁ: The theme of childhood in Caribbean literature /Summary/
PEPRNÍK M.: Monsters and the otherness in British fantastic fiction of the 19th century
SOUKUPOVÁ: Symbols of life and death in Old English poetry /Summary/
SPARLING: Inventing the past: Canadian historical fiction /Summary/
STŘÍBRNÝ: Shakespeare in the cold and at large /Summary/
VESELÁ: The mirrors of time in the work of Laurence Durrell
VĚŠÍNOVÁ: Genteel gender conflicts: Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence and Henry James's Daisy Miller /Summary/
VLČKOVÁ: Direct speech in a novel /Summary/

METHODOLOGY (10 papers)
BOCKOVÁ: Designing Business English tests
HLAVŇOVÁ: Effective ESP reading /Summary/
HRIVÍKOVÁ: Special courses: A possible way out?
JETTMAROVÁ: Five types of translation in the teaching of English
KATRŇÁKOVÁ: Discourse patterns in children's narratives
PAPP: The problem of motivation: Training teachers who want to beteachers /Summary/
PHILLIPS: Learning teaching
PÝCHOVÁ: The communicative approach revisited /Summary/
TANDLICHOVÁ: Classroom management: A framework for trainees' pedagogic skills development /Summary/
VYBÍRALOVÁ: Do we know the learners? Some remarks on introducing needs analysis to schools

TRANSLATION STUDIES (4 papers)

GAZDÍK: Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe in Slovak translations /Summary/
JINDRA: Some frequent problems of inexperienced translators from English to Czech
MÁNEK: Translation of English and American poetry in the Czech National Revival /Summary/
RAMBOUSEK: The Czech translations of Coleridge's The Ancient Mariner: What were Sládek's two errors mentioned by Palivec? /Summary/


SUMMARIES OF PAPERS


Daniela BAČOVÁ

Harold Pinter: Reading A Slight Ache without pain

The paper reflects on certain aspects of Harold Pinter's one-act play A Slight Ache. It focuses on the dramatic action that is perceived through the text of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot. The author also notices that Szondi's definition of modern 20th century drama (one-act play) can be applied to Pinter's one-act plays as they are concerned with exploration of dramatic situation rather than dramatic personae. The second part of the paper deals with the pedagogical aspects of reading a dramatic text. The author introduces the basic elements of process drama (pre-text, teacher in role, student in role, reflection on the process) and provides a practical example of a pre-text suitable for A Slight Ache. She concludes that process drama is an effective way to help students understand as well as enjoy the postmodern texts of Harold Pinter's plays.


Ivo BROSKEVIČ

Some aspects of mass media language

The results of my research indicate that the majority of most frequent words in mass media are determinatives, prepositions, conjunctions, pronouns and auxiliary verbs. More than two thirds of the types are represented by nouns (45 per cent) and verbs (27 per cent). The percentages of adjectives are about half of those of verbs, but almost three times the numbers of adverbs. The other parts of speech reach percentages of about 2 or less each.
When comparing the average percentage of different words, or types, in the total of words in each individual text, the results show that the richest are the comparatively short CNN reports with the percentage

of 71, the BBC items reaching 64 per cent and the newspaper articles only 58 per cent.
The language is rich in metaphors. In reports about election campaign, for example, we find expressions which are not very dif-ferent from the violent and militaristic language describing guerilla fighting.


Jana CHAMONIKOLASOVÁ

A prosodic analysis of English and Czech spoken texts

The author analysed Czech and English recordings of Václav Havel's play Protest. She marked tone unit boundaries and the position of the nucleus (the most prominent accent) in each tone unit. The comparison of the two scripted spoken texts produced the following results:
Tone units were, on the average, longer in English (4.7 words) than in Czech (3.9 words). The nucleus occurred close to the end of a tone unit in both languages, but the distance from the end is slightly greater in English (1.6 words) than in Czech (1.2 words). These prosodic differences concur with the differences at the level of syntax and morphology (analytical language with grammaticalized word order versus synthetic language with a relatively free word order). Despite different tone unit structure, the total number of tone units in the English text (556) did not differ noticeably from the number in the Czech text (534). English and Czech speakers needed about the same number of tone units to express identical semantic contents.


Libuše DUŠKOVÁ

Synonymy vs. differentiation of variant realizations of the information structure

The paper deals with variant syntactic realizations of the information structure containing the second participant in verbal action with the FSP function of theme. The constructions under consideration include the passive, in which it appears as the subject, active clauses with thematic object and clauses with object fronting. Fronting is moreover considered with respect to its relationship to clefting. These variant realizations are first treated from the viewpoint of their function as an FSP device and then analysed with a view to establishing their degree of synonymy or differentiation.
The analysis shows the constructions to differ in the FSP structure, and in the case of the pasive/active relationship also in the semantic structure. Consequently, interchangeability is largely ruled out. Clarification of instances in which it is possible requires further study.


Milan FERENČÍK

On some aspects of interactional dynamism of spoken communi-cation

In my paper I attempted to analyse the interactional structure of two dialogues (a dyad and a polylogue) which appeared in phone-in talk shows on two radio stations in the USA and Slovakia respectively. In both cases I am dealing with a very specific type of publicly broadcast communication between an institution (a radio station) and a private person. Also the paper presented a means of presenting the interactional dynamics of the two dialogues (turntaking mechanism, simultaneous speech, overlap, interruptions, etc.) in a surveyable manner, the so-called interaction diagram. My intention was also to investigate the sociolinguistic, psycholinguistic and pragmalinguistic factors which enter the communication and interpret their meaning from the multi-cultural perspective.

Milan FERENČÍK see also Slávka KRAJČOVIČOVÁ


Jan FIRBAS

The role of intonation in FSP

The Brno investigation into functional sentence perspective (FSP) has been endeavouring to establish the signals determining the perspective in which the sentence functions in the act of communication. Analyses of texts have shown that FSP is a formative force which resolves into four factors: the contextual factor, the semantic factor, linear modification and - in spoken language - also intonation. Each factor yields its signals. The factors operate in an interplay which is reflected by the interplay of the signals they yield. This interplay constitutes a system. It is the main purpose of the paper to demonstrate on the basis of an analysis of a short spoken text (a dialogue) how the signals yielded by intonation - prosodic features displaying different degrees of prominence - participate in the interplay and what communicative effects they produce.


Štefan FRANKO see under Pavol ŠTEKAUER


Milada FRANKOVÁ

Molly Keane's black comedy: A critique of a class

Molly Keane's novels and plays written under the pseudonym of M.J. Farrell enjoyed wide popularity from the 1920s to the 1950s. After a prolonged silence of some thirty years, she reappeared on the literary scene in the 1980s with three novels (Good Behaviour, 1981; Time After Time, 1983; Loving and Giving, 1988), in which she revisits the Anglo-Irish Big House after half a century with the keen and dark insight of black comedy. What may appear as wicked fun with a pinch of nostalgia, turns out to be less innocuous on closer scrutiny. The proverbial good behaviour which defines Keane's characters as a class is shown to restrict and thwart them to fit the class mould. The resulting picture is far from pleasing and Keane's critical sting unmistakable. The novels were received with acclaim, but classified merely as good entertainment. The paper argues against this lack of recognition of Keane's critical vision and suggests that her novels subvert rather than uphold the cult of the Big House.


Marian GAZDÍK

Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe in Slovak translations

About twenty editions of Daniel Defoe's novel The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, one of the most read works of popular literature, appeared in the Slovak language. The first editions were loose paraphrases made according to the German adaptations by A. Gräbner and J. J. Campe, published from 1882 up to 1920 (adapted by A. Sokolík, F. Lipovský, F. Kriwánsky, D. Balogh etc.). They are typical for changes on the formal plane, changes in the story and for overt didacticism and religious tendencies. Translations published from 1923 to 1945, made by V. Szatmáry-Vlčková, Š. Bednárová-Krasková and others, more or less preserve the story, but omit the less important episodes. A. Petráš's translation of 1951 slightly abridged the original text but also archaized its language. The 1955 translation of K. Chukovsky's adaptation deleted all references to God and religion. A. Bednár's successful translation (1958 and later editions) preserved the story but raised its expressiveness and rewrote some passages into dialogues. J. Vojtek's 1978 translation is the most formally faithful rendering although some toponyms are omitted. V. Krupa's translation (1991), rendered in a lucid and fluent prose, omitted several uninteresting passages. From all the mentioned translations the last three represent the most faithful and adequate rendering of the original.


Iva GILBERTOVÁ

Wole Soyinka: A Scourge of Hyacinths

Wole Soyinka's recent writing contains much open political commentary. His plays A Scourge of Hyacinths (radio play) and From Zia, With Love (stage drama), published in a single volume in 1992, share the basic story, inspired by real events. A rich Lagosian is executed along with all those whom the military regime sentences retrospectively to death. Though the stage drama contains passages from the slightly earlier radio play, each of them is a different response to the topic, using means proper to the genres of the radio and theatre play respectively. A Scourge of Hyacinths is a shorter work, a tragedy concentrated on the impact of corrupted power on individual human destiny and using predominantly music and sound as non-verbal means of expression. From Zia, With Love is a cruel farce with a tragic undertone and ending, presenting a sharper and more general image of the society. Within its complicated composition, music, song, dance and mime are used along with spoken word. Both plays share a central symbol of water hyacinths, choking the Lagos lagoon as the military regime chokes the country's life.


Eva HAJIČOVÁ

Salience in dialogues (A study based on A Corpus of spoken English)

The objective of the present contribution is to discuss some points in which the picture of the changes of activation of the stock of knowledge the speaker assumes s/he shares with the hearer differs when a dialogue rather than a piece of monologue is analysed. The original model we refer to in our paper (SSK) was presented first by the present author and J. Vrbová in 1981, and was further developed in several subsequent works. Its basic assumptions rely on the idea that this activation depends basically on factors related to the topic-focus articulation of the sentences.
A detailed analysis of the changes of activation in the samples of dialogues taken from Svartvik and Quirk, A Corpus of Spoken English, 1980, has demonstrated that the rules established for the analysis of monologues are valid and useful here, too. However, there are some aspects of dialogues that point to the necessity to make some complementations in the model.
(i) The rules assigning the degrees of activation have to be first of all complemented by adding the activation of (the mental images of) the interlocutors. They can always enter the scene in the topic of the utterance behaving thus in the same way as contextually bound items and they remain activated throughout the dialogue. However, they are not the most highly activated elements of the SSK unless they are referred to in the focus of the sentence.
(ii) For a monologue type of discourse, we have worked with a single SSK, reflecting, as a matter of fact, the hierarchy of activation of the elements in the speaker's stock, the state of which the speaker assumes to be the same as in the hearer's stock. In order to give an adequate picture of the dynamic character of dialogues in terms of the hierarchy of activation of the elements of the SSK, one should work with separate, though highly overlapping stocks for individual interlocutors, where salience of particular elements depends not only on the immediate co-text and shared context of situation, but also on the particular interlocutor-specific context of situation.
(iii) The interference of the context of situation into a dialogue is another factor that distinguishes the monologue and the dialogue types of discourses.
An account in terms of the changes of activation in the SSK also offers a basis on which segmentation of the dialogues can be analysed.

Josef HLADKÝ

Reduplication as word-formative means in Czech and English

Reduplication is part of the word-formation processes both in Czech and in English. However, there are qualitative and quantitative differences in the range of application. There are very few cases of ablaut (and alliteration) in Czech and most of these were borrowed from other languages. The number of reduplicatives in English is several times higher than in Czech, which can be explained by the fact that reduplication, together with blends, alliteration and phrases with and, is an area where speakers of English can "play with words", while speakers of Czech use derivatives.


Anna HLAVŇOVÁ

Effective ESP reading

It has ben widely argued that reading comprehension in a foreign language does not require perfect language proficiency - understanding every word, every syntactic structure. Importance is attached to the students' abilities to exploit their knowledge of the foreign language and the knowledge of the subject matter of the text they are reading. The responsibility of teachers is not simply to present students with texts followed by comprehension questions. Teachers should help students develop effective reading skills and strategies for comprehending.
Skills in reading depend on the efficient interaction between linguistic knowledge and knowledge of the world.
Our students have serious reading problems, eg they read word by word, focus too much attention on form at the expense of meaning, they pay too much attention to details, their background knowledge is limited.
The main objective of any reading course should be (i) to teach students how to get information from a text efficiently, rapidly, and with full understanding, (ii) to foster the students' ability to read at an appropriate speed, (iii) to show them how to make intelligent guesses as to the meaning of unfamiliar words, and (iv) to help them adopt efficient reading strategies.


Hana HUDECOVÁ

Misunderstood messages: Some aspects of the Boston graffiti scene

Hip-hop graffiti - colorful inscriptions on various "public" and "private" surfaces - has been an interesting social and cultural phenomenon of the urban life in the US for a couple of decades. Some appreciate it as a form of art, others refuse it as vandalism and urban blight.
However, the aim of the present paper is not to draw conclusions about the artistic value of graffiti. Rather, it concentrates on a social analysis of a couple of worlds that the Boston graffiti scene incorporates: the world of Afro-American and Hispanic graffiti writers living mostly in the low-income neighborhoods and that of the anti-graffiti activists, represented by the city police, Boston City Council authorities and a whole group of graffiti removal business. The aim of the analysis is to demonstrate the failing communication between these two worlds, resulting from the dramatically different understanding of graffiti on the two sides. The paper tries to show how the understanding of graffiti (as a form of social bonding, visibility, art, power on the one hand, and as vandalism, crime, etc., on the other) is formed on the two sides by, eg personal contacts, or media coverage. The consequences of the failed communication are apparent in the law-making agenda, which, as the Boston case proves, develops towards increased criminalization of graffiti. In the conclusion, the paper points out some examples of alternative approaches to solve the graffiti problem; eg in Boston, the involvement of artists as a kind of "cultural mediators" between the legal and illegal worlds.


Slávka KRAJČOVIČOVÁ, Milan FERENČÍK

Some sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic aspects of verbal and non-verbal elements of communication in literary discourse

Our aim was to show how verbal and non verbal components of communication function in conversation within the literary discourse (George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four). As the basic frame of the analysis, the projector based on the methodology of pragmastylistics by the Ukrainian linguist Prof. Volkov was used and was supplemented by the classification of non-verbal means of communication as defined by Prof. Mistrík. Also, by analysing the interactional structure of the key dialogue (chapter 5) of the two principal heroes we are trying to prove that the detailed analysis of language and paralanguage in fiction does not destroy the wonder of literature but it rather contributes to its deeper understanding.


Jaroslav KUŠNÍR

Experiment in Donald Barthelme's novel Snow White

In this paper I have focused on the experimental aspects of one of the most famous of Donald Barthelme's postmodern novels Snow White. These experimental aspects manifest themselves especially in the style, composition, narrative voice and construction of the story and its characters. All the experimental aspects of Donald Barthelme's novel: a variety of many different styles used in the text (fairly-tale simple colloquial, journalistic, administrative, political rhetorics), self-reflexivity, incoherent composition reminding "retractions", "records", or "responses", fast switch of the multiple narrative voices, destructed meaning, and a lack of plot and psychological characterization of the protagonists do not only contribute to the destruction of the text, but they also move it far away from traditional realist text towards a typical postmodern work.


Lidia KYZLINKOVÁ

Social issues in Agatha Christie's mysteries
(Class, crime, country, clothes, and generation)

As Agatha Christie's career spans so many decades, decades, which have seen so many dramatic changes in British life, her books are a rich lode for social historians. Detective story writers have to offer plausible details and Christie's mysteries give a surprising amount of accurate information about everyday life. A Murder is Announced is for instance a novel portraying conditions in English country life in the years right after World War II. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, The Murder at the Vicarage, The Moving Finger, Murder is Easy and Sad Cypress are just a few books that supply us with details of what those villages must have been like in the era between wars. Later, eg in The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side, we are offered a more up-to-date look at the same strata of society. We learn about such down-to-earth things as food shortages, housing scarcity, the sudden influx of strangers to areas that had had stable populations for generations, and difficulty in getting domestic help. It is the last item that the author is mainly concerned with. The servants are rarely seen to have enough intelligence or personality and are usually doomed to the realm of the red herring. There are some exquisite servant characters to be found in the twenty-five books the author chose to analyse, criticize, and otherwise comment on, eg Lucy Eyelesbarrow from 4.50 from Paddington. Agatha Christie is known for her continuous criticism of her characters' preoccupation with class and money - not to mention their prejudices regarding national origin. And it is the "nice" people of the upper crust, trapped in the web of prejudice and misdirected blame, that miss the bloodied fingers of their nearest and dearest.


Štěpánka MAGSTADTOVÁ

American and British studies - successes and problems

American Studies program at the West Bohemia University at Plzeň will enter into its 3rd year. The program is a result of WBU's aim to enrich the students' horizons. (The students mostly major in technical subjects.) Any student from WBU may enroll. Students of combined degrees take the AS core course as a part of their curriculum while the rest of the students who choose to enroll in the AS program take these classes on top of their main degree (economics, law, engineering). The core course is also compulsory for them. Both sets of students may decide to take other AS courses and upon a completion of six and passing an examination they receive a certificate in AS. In our AS program we cover whole range of subjects from American history to marketing. All courses are taught in English by both native and non-native lecturers. Our main goal is to involve students and to make the program firmly established within the Department of Applied Linguistics.


Bohuslav MÁNEK

Translation of English and American poetry in the Czech National Revival

It is generally recognized that translations played important role in the great revival of Czech literature from the 1770s to 1850s. These translations included the work of British Neoclassic poets (eg Pope), Sentimentalists and Pre-romantics (eg Thomson, Gray, Young and Macpherson-Ossian), Romantics (especially Byron, Scott and Longfellow) and two great Renaissance authors, Milton and Shakespeare. The selection of texts and their styles in translation were closely connected with the development of Czech literature during the period under study. The most distinguished translations were influential as inspiration for original work, or were instrumental in promoting the development of literary techniques, the full scale of genres, etc. The texts, widely scattered in almanacs and periodicals, provide a mine of material for comparative literature and translation studies.


Vladimíra MIŇOVSKÁ

ICLE - International Corpus of Learner English

The International Corpus of Learner English launched in 1990 at Louvain University in Belgium is a computerized database of essays written by advanced learners of English as a foreign language. It represents one of the specialised corpora within ICE (International Corpus of English) based at University College London. Advanced learners (3rd and 4th year university students specializing in English literature and/or linguistics) from various mother-tongue backgrounds have been selected in order to enable a thorough investigation of their English interlanguage and a study of the particular problem of "foreign-soundingness" in their production. All the teams participating in the project collect the same type of data: argumentative essays on a number of suggested topics or literary essays including exam papers of 1,000 words per student. The corpus will be available in three versions: untagged, tagged and parsed.
The Czech subcorpus has so far about 120,000 words. New participants are most welcome. More details, especially concerning formal requirements are available at my home address (Bílkova 12, 110 00 Praha 1). Unfortunately our Slovak colleagues cannot join the Czech subcorpus owing to a diferent mother tongue.


Gabriela MIŠŠÍKOVÁ

Lexical configurations in technical terminology.
Semantic approach in dental terminology.

The paper aims at the most frequent lexical relationships classified between terms of dental terminology and possibilities of their presentation by means of different lexical configurations, such as branching and non-branching hierarchies. Main principles of a hierarchy are described and examples from dentistry are used to exemplify different types of generic and partitive hierarchies.
Taxonomies and meronomies are discussed as the two main types of hierarchies used in dental terminology and compared with facets which are more common in technical terminology. Facets are based on type-indicators which can be efficiently presented in hierarchical configurations as well. In addition to that, a hierarchy presents determination of particular terms on several levels, which can be an advantage in the case of both generic and partitive hierarchies.
Hierarchical configurations are studied also from the point of view of their links with concrete reality.

Viera NEMČOKOVÁ

English computing terms in Slovak

It seems that the Slovak terminological system of computing comprises a great number of English terms. Analysed linguistic material has shown the predominance of English terms in professional slang.
The verbs represent a considerable group of professional expressions. All analysed verbs are hybrids consisting of an English word-base and a Slovak affix: escap/e/ - ovat', boot - ovat', zip - ovat', roz - zipovat'.
Borrowed substantives form the second important group of professional expressions. All of them are treated as inanimate masculines with zero ending and are included into a suitable masculine paradigm according to the consonantal ending (either in spelling or in pronunciation): (a) paradigm dub: bus, input, software, (b) paradigm stroj: cartridge, display.
The combination of Slovak and English elements results in hybrid complex naming units (drivery mechaniky) and hybrid word-combinations (softwarové prostriedky pre windows), both with strict Slovak pronunciation.


Věra PÁLENSKÁ

The theme of childhood in Caribbean literature

Childhood and adolescence are the subjects of a relatively high percentage of contemporary Caribbean semi-autobiographical novels that can be roughly divided into two groups: one includes the works that move away from the mainstream tradition of the English nineteenth-century novel towards a more Caribbean' form, the other contains the works that are more or less in the European tradition. In the novels of childhood of the first group the physical and psychological development of a child protagonist usually coincides with fundamental changes in his milieu, school symbolizes incompetence, ignorance and savagery and higher education leads to protagonist's gradual alienation that culminates towards the end of the book when s/he leaves his or her family or community and goes into the unknown world, usually into exile. Typical examples of the novels of that kind are George Lamming's In the Castle of My Skin (1953), Austin Chesterfield Clarke's Amongst Thistles and Thorns (1965) and Growing up Stupid under the Union Jack (1980) and, to some extent, Jamaica Kincaid's Annie John (1983). In the novels of the second group the authors do not refer to the Caribbean political and social scene, do not criticize the educational system and concentrate on the inner lives of their protagonists who, though undergoing painful experiences, eventually accept the new situation. Among the most representative books of this kind are Geoffrey Drayton's Christopher (1959) and Michael Anthony's The Year in San Fernando (1965). Whether traditional or more Caribbean' in nature, the novels of childhood are closely connected with the birth of modern Caribbean novel-writing and have had a considerable impact on post-war Caribbean literature.


James R. PAPP

The problem of motivation: Training teachers who want to be teachers

This paper analyses two surveys of the initial class in the PHARE English program at Pedagogická fakulta of the Comenius University in Bratislava, conducted in the students' first and third years (1993 and '96). 80% of students (31) responded to the first survey, just over 50% (18) to the second. The first survey showed that only 45% respondents in this teacher training program wished to teach, and at most 35% of them to teach children in school. The faculty failed to respond to this information, and three years later only 11% of respondents wished to teach children full time, another 22% considering it as a largely undesirable option, and another 22% considering it part time. Of the 33% of students who had changed their mind about their job goal while in the program, most had become less enthusiastic about teaching. Low pay predominated as a reason not to teach, at 80% of negative respondents, but bad working conditions and teaching being an insufficiently respected position each were cited by 50%. The paper concludes that a moderate pay increase would reduce the barrier to a significant proportion of those declining to teach, but that equally important would be a strong institutional response to low teaching quality in the university (which was criticized by 50% of respondents, often in extreme terms), as well as explicit discussion by teacher trainers of why they themselves chose teaching.


Marianna PRČÍKOVÁ

Some aspects of gender and language studies

The first part of the paper gives a brief history of attitudes towards gender from various aspects. It exemplifies the strength of the field as very broad and interdisciplinary. Gender studies have been recently introduced as special courses at many universities. Various definitions of gender often cause a lot of controversial interpretations. The next part of the paper discusses different types of gender system in various languages. It compares English with its pronominal, primarily natural, covert semantic gender system, and Slovak, a formal and morphological, overt gender system. The attempts to promote linguistic change in English language have different roots: prescriptive grammarians and their calls for stylistic accuracy, and feminists' insistence on equal representation of men and women in language. The agenda for further research in the field is outlined. The necessity to switch from the broad generalization typical of many researchers and feminists to a more sensitive analysis with a focus on functions of certain linguistic forms in context is stressed.


Iva PÝCHOVÁ

The communicative approach revisited

The article presents a list of the "classical" characteristic features of the communicative approach that express the attitude inherent in this approach towards the language taught, towards methodology and generally towards English language teaching philosophy. The features that have been selected are: emphasising the semantic aspects of the target language, the primacy of spoken languge, fluency as compared with accuracy, the authenticity of the language taught, the importance of context, the significance of subconscious acquisition of the target language, learner-centredness, the facilitating role of the teacher, group activities, communicative competence, language as a means of communication. Furthermore, some current influences, events and findings are discussed in an attempt to explain some transformations and new trends in the teaching of English as a foreign language today.


Jiří RAMBOUSEK

The Czech translations of Coleridge's The Ancient Mariner: What were Sládek's two errors mentioned by Palivec?

In the afterword to his translation, published 1949, Josef Palivec compares his work with that of his predecessor Josef Václav Sládek (1896) and states: "...Je to mistr. Nebýt toho, že na dvou obzvláště závažných místech je v jeho přetlumočení (...) úplně převrácen smysl originálu, bylo by lépe vydat jeho překlad znovu..."
The paper presented all sections of the text where the two translations differ in meaning; one of the two problematic places was determined quite clearly (ie stanzas 5/21, 22, where Sládek seriously distorts the meaning of the passage by improperly relating the pronoun she to the Sun rather than to the ship). It is not possible, however, to select which of the other pasages accounts for the second error. Moreover, Sládek's understanding of some passages in the text seems to be more adequate than Palivec's.
The paper also compared the passages in question with the work of the other Czech translators of the poem: Nesvadba, Renč and Máchová.



Anna RITLYOVÁ

Teaching cultural studies at the Pedagogical Faculty of P.J. Šafárik University in Prešov

Teaching cultural studies has become an important part of ELT since 1989 in our country. The Department of English Language and Literature was only established in 1990 and the most important problem at the beginning of its existence was how to design all the courses and how much time to devote to respective subjects. We decided to teach British and American history and geography to first year students. Life, institutions and culture were included in practical language classes. Later on we decided to change our curricula in favour of cultural studies and we added, to one hour of lecture on history, another hour of seminar on British and American life and institutions. They are more practically oriented.
Literature also forms part of cultural studies. Through the six years of our existence we have changed the way of teaching it several times. Originally we began with theory of literature in the first year, followed by survey courses of British and American literature. Later on we added children's literature and as an option the Australian short story. Theory of literature has been changed into more practical language through literature in which we comprise theory of literature and use of literary text in EFL. As we are a teacher training college, our task is to prepare our students, future English teachers, to work with poetry, short stories, and other genres.


Vladislav SMOLKA

On restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses

Although restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses are relatively well-defined categories characterized by particular semantic and formal features, a number of relative clauses found in periodical and professional literature as well as in fiction, do not easily fit this dichotomy. Some clauses that are semantically restrictive or non-restrictive break formal rules of their respective type (choice of introductory relatives and punctuation), while others semantically constitute a transitional type between restriction and non-restricton, and usually have formal features of restrictive clauses. Formally defective structures are rare in professional literature, but common in periodical literature and especially in fiction. The breaking of formal rules suggests the writer's uncertainty about the status of a particular relative clause rather than ignorance of the rules.


Helena SOUKUPOVÁ

Symbols of life and death in Old English poetry

The paper deals with three literary images - the mead-hall, weather, and transience of life. These images occur rather frequently in Old English poetry and are connected with poetic view of life and death: The mead-hall often symbolizes life and civilization, and the attributes of bad weather accompany scenes dealing with death (or exile). In certain Old English texts, the depiction of life's transience, the sense of which was deeply rooted among the Anglo-Saxons, proceeds from this symbolism; for instance, life is compared to a sparrow's flight through the mead-hall surrounded by darkness and snow-storms; elsewhere, the ruined mead-hall stands for the decaying world, and so on. As an illustration, selected extracts taken from Old English heroic and elegiac poetry have been used.


Don SPARLING

Inventing the past: Canadian historical fiction

After a period of glory in the nineteenth century, historical fiction came to be looked down upon as "lowbrow" by critics. But in recent years large numbers of outstanding historical novels have been written, much of them "historiographic metafiction" (Linda Hutcheon) or "historicized fiction" (Steven Connor). One such work is The Life and Times of Captain N., by the Canadian writer Douglas Glover, published in 1993. Set in upper New York State at the time of the American Revolution, it is not only a brilliant and realistic depiction of the savage brutality of the warfare in this marginal region, but an enquiry into the meeting of the European (rationality, writing) and Native (ethics, orality) worlds and mentalities, and a meditation on the way that history is yet another of the texts by which we try to give shape to experience.


Jaroslava STAŠKOVÁ see Pavol ŠTEKAUER


Pavol ŠTEKAUER, James SUTHERLAND-SMITH, Štefan FRANKO, Jaroslava STAŠKOVÁ

Getting beyond the rules of language

The paper presents fundamental results of an extensive research focused on the intuitive component of language learning. The research methodology makes use of those foreign language structures which are not typical of testees' mother language. The intuitive component is evaluated on the basis of comparison of a set of competence tests. The results indicate that there is no direct proportionality between the intuitive component and the competence, which supports the initial premiss concerning the relative independence of the intuitive component within the process of language learning.


Zdeněk STŘÍBRNÝ

Shakespeare in the cold and at large

The paper was concerned with two Shakespeare conferences which took place in the United States in April 1996.
On April 4th-6th an international conference met at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., to discuss a single theme: "Shakespeare in the Worlds of Communism, 1920-1990". Charles University was represented by Martin Hilský, who gave a semiotically oriented paper on "Translation of Politics - Politics of Translation, Czech Experience", and Zdeněk Stříbrný, whose paper was entitled "Shakespeare in the Cold: Production and Criticism in Former Communist Countries". From 29 March to 31 August an exhibition entitled "Comrade Shakespeare" was opened in one corner of the Great Hall of the Folger Library, featuring critical works, translations, and documentation of performances of Shakespeare in the former Communist Bloc.
From 7 to 14 April the Sixth World Shakespeare Congress took place in Los Angeles with the general theme "Shakespeare and the Twentieth Century". In contrast to the monothematic Folger conference, the Congress represented Shakespeare at the largest stretch of thematic range. The very titles of the individual lectures, seminars, and workshops indicated the great variety of approaches to Shakespeare: Shakespeare and Post-modernism, Shakespeare and Intercultural Shakespeare with Particular Reference to China and Japan, Post-colonial India, Much Ado about Nothing Deconstructed, Gender and Power in Shakespeare, 20th Century Women's Rewritings of Shakespeare, Ambiguities in Iris Murdoch's The Black Prince, Shakespeare and James Joyce, Shakespeare and Samuel Beckett, Shakespeare and the Movies, Shakespeare on Television and Video, The Shakespearean Texts in the Electronic Age, Shakespeare beyond the Absurd, Shakespeare after Marx, Shakespeare and Queer Performativity, etc. Among the 1,000 participants, Martin Procházka and Zdeněk Stříbrný presented their seminar papers; Procházka also co-chaired one of the seminars and Stříbrný chaired one of the sessions.


James SUTHERLAND-SMITH see Pavol ŠTEKAUER



Aleš SVOBODA

Context as vector

Context was examined and reexamined many times, but most often it was viewed as a polar (context dependent - context independent) or as a scalar (graded quantity) phenomenon. The analysis of the role of context in everyday communication shows that the three basic types of context (verbal, situational, and experiential) considerably overlap. The presence of both verbal, and situational, and experiential context is not a borderline case, but their co-occurrence is a frequent phenomenon. Investigation of school communication results in the necessity to distinguish acoustic contexts (lingual, paralingual, non-lingual) and optical contexts (lingual, paralingual, non-lingual). Context in general is to be regarded as a vector of many dimensions. Nevertheless the integrating force of the human brain makes the final result relatively simple so that the percipient mostly understands the message in much the same perspective as has been created by the producer.


Diana SVOBODOVÁ

English loanwords in contemporary Czech journalistic texts

English loanwords appear in both written and spoken Czech journalistic texts very frequently. In the excerpted newspapers, television and radio news, the so called "new" loanwords (adopted during the 1980's and the 1990's) relate usually to the fields of computer science, economics, management, sport and modern music. These anglicism are used either in their original forms, with a particular grammatical gender being assigned to them (eg summary, promotion), or in formally adapted forms with modified spelling and pronunciation (brífink, skener). A great deal of newly adopted borrowings is represented by original or hybrid compound words (houseparty, superpříloha). The influence of the English language can be also seen in the use of several types of originally Latin prefixes that correspond to the specific needs of the journalistic style (exministr, remake, vicemiss).

Eva TANDLICHOVÁ

Classroom management: A framework for trainees' pedagogic skills development

The author of the present paper tries to deal with the classroom management with regard to the development of trainees' linguistic skills - by means of mastering classroom language. This is considered to be a very important medium in classroom management.
Another very important component to be considered part of successful classroom management is mastering pedagogic skills which include among other factors teacher-student communication, material and textbook selection, motivation, etc.
The author deals with all the above mentioned with regard to trainees' responses and ideas presented through a questionnaire. The questionnaire included ten questions which were answered by the trainees twice: at the beginning of the EFLT course and after the teaching practice at schools. The author compares the similarities and differences of the answers.


Jarmila TÁRNYIKOVÁ

Czenglo-mania: Health to our mouths?

The paper focuses on a selected number of corpus-based manifestations of contact-induced communicative strategies applied in the process of language adoption and adaptation, in which the donor language is English and the recipient language is Czech. Language contact as a phenomenon is treated as a sociocultural matter - and a linguistic product of language contact is looked upon as an equilibrium between internal and external factors. The process of adoption and adaptation is seen as a cline with two discrete phases, ie the phase of a contact- induced language choice and the phase of a contact-induced language change. The blend Czenglo-mania refers to the English infiltration motivated in our mass media by the connotation of prestige (eg to sound "westernized", to establish a specific atmosphere of "life in the big city", etc) or caused by strong insistence of the less experienced translators on the source language. Hudson's (1981:48) "very tentative hypothesis" about different types of linguistic items and their relation to society is applied to discuss (i) structural modifications represented by unexpected chains of modifiers in NP's, (ii) lexical borrowings, (iii) misleading pronunciation in advertisements, and (iv) borrowings of discourse markers (OK, sorry, sure, all right...).


Eva VĚŠÍNOVÁ

Genteel gender conflicts: Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence and Henry James's Daisy Miller

The paper discusses in comparison some aspects of the story and narrative in the two well-known works of the genteel tradition of American literature. It points to the fact of the contrasting gender focus of the narratives: the male experience of a strong "cross-cultural" relationship (the beloved woman is a Europeanized American) is in the center of the woman author's story while a female emotional and cultural rebellion is focused by the man author. As the stories in both works revolve around artful socializing of the upper-class Americans in New York and in Europe, respectively, the gender roles (modes of male and female existence shaped by social realities and objectives) are, in the given social environment, elaborate and obliging. What the paper attempts to reveal is the drama of gender conflicts hidden in both the fictional pictures of manners. Though both the main male characters are attracted to the women who dare to break the patterns of gender behaviour, they are not able to free themselves from the conventions and prejudice sufficiently. With failing, ineffective communication, the relationship remains sadly and tragically unfulfilled.



Jitka VLČKOVÁ

Direct speech in a novel

The paper is an illustration of what can be revealed by an analysis of speech acts in a novel. The applied sociolinguistic approach shows markers which the characters use to signal their belonging to a particular social (ethnic) group and their relationship with members of other social (ethnic) groups.

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